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Bonfire – working to build safer, more open federated tools and communities
- jppope 4y ago[flagged]
- zamalek 4y ago> Circles That's the one thing that was typically missing from open social networks aiming to displace Facebook. I still remember when relationships were "official on Facebook," and I'm sure some of that psychology persists (however subtly) and is one reason that Facebook just wont die. I'll definitely be setting up an instance for my family, maybe I can get them all to finally kick the habit.
- VikingCoder 4y agoInteresting. Please let me filter content by language. Or please start up a primarily English instance.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agodid a cursory look, is this on activitypub or something else because that would be reinventing the wheel.
- teucris 4y ago> Each Bonfire community has the power to federate with others communities but also with other fediverse platforms that support the ActivityPub protocol.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agook. now i need to have a look
- tomhallett 4y agoI've been thinking about this problem space quite a bit, and I have 2 "stress-test" questions which I use to see how quickly it will devolve into facebook: 1) Can someone who is already famous, ex: some TV political pundit, join the network and quickly leverage the networks strengths to acquire a following. EVEN if that acquisition happens out-of-network. For example: let's say bonfire has 100 million users, it's a problem if someone famous can say "follow me on bonfire" and get 10 million followers in a week. While I understand this is a very high bar, any solutions to this problem (regardless of their implementation), will require people to know eachother personally in a non-scaleable way. 2) Can someone who is not famous, ex: a conspiracy theorist, gain a following by posting controversial/clickbait things. Ie there can be any algorithmic feedback loop of consumption (views/likes/follows) fueling viral growth. IMHO, if the answer to either of those is yes, you are fighting a losing battle.
- wmf 4y agoI'm not necessarily disagreeing, but why is it bad if many people voluntarily follow someone?
- tomhallett 4y agoGood question - I’m not saying that it’s bad if people voluntarily follow someone, what I’m saying is slightly different. It is bad if a network, like Facebook, has a large user base where it is attractive/valueable/helpful to someone who can know gain a larger following simply by joining (and getting people to voluntarily follow them). The network itself has value and people are able to exploit that value. Look at this example in comparison to the alternative - that political pundit launching their own network. They can say “hey, go join my social network which I just created!”. I firmly believe they should be entitled todo that and people should be able to voluntarily signup/follow them on that new network. But that is a much much harder task to build/operate/scale then simply joining yet another social network and tapping into the user base.
- gs17 4y ago> Ie there can be any algorithmic feedback loop of consumption (views/likes/follows) fueling viral growth. Usually Fediverse type platforms just use reverse chronological order (or similar as options) with no "algorithm" for personalized content recommendations. Bonfire explicitly states such in their FAQ.
- the-printer 4y agoThere is a sort of “post-corporate Memphis” design style and marketing language that I’ve been paying more attention to for some time now. It discomforts me.
- rambambram 4y agoI'm curious what you are up to. Care to tell some more?
- CharlesW 4y ago"Corporate Memphis"¹ refers to a style of art. I don't quite see how the woodcut-style images used on this site would be considered a descendant of that. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis
- the-printer 4y agoMy interpretation of “Post-corporate Memphis” basically involves everything about corporate Memphis minus the imagery. It’s more about how the style is conveyed without the use of that sort of art work.
- rambambram 4y agoAh, clear now. I think it's in the wording then, and some emoji's here and there.
- the-printer 4y agoI suspect that there is a sort of “design language” that more or less unabashedly targets the psycho-social state that many millennials (and perhaps even more youthful Gen Z and Boomer crowds; granted my understanding of how “generations” work isn’t a great) feel about the world. I shouldn’t have to to think about dopamine and capitalism when I’m looking for a social network; on the other hand I do, kind of, but being introduced to software or a service shouldn’t be presented as such an emotional experience as I think it is.
- 0xbadcafebee 4y ago> for the post-capitalist world There needs to be a word that means "I almost thought what you were proposing sounded reasonable, until you said that last thing, and now I've lost all confidence."
- throwaway0x7E6 4y agoit's a dogwhistle for likeminded folx
- uoaei 4y agoCapitalism is not just "the existence of money and markets". You can still have money and markets without capitalism.
- dmonitor 4y agoCapitalism is when businesses do things I don't like, and the more they do those things the more capitalist it is.
- Mikeb85 4y ago> You can still have money and markets without capitalism Money yes markets ish. A pillar of capitalism is the private ownership of capital, without private ownership many markets no longer exist (talking the economic definition of 'market').
- uoaei 4y ago"Some markets become obsolete when you remove capitalism" is not the same as "markets are only a thing under capitalism". The real estate market would probably look much different and may even dissolve entirely if you forbid private ownership of real estate capital. I don't think this is a groundbreaking insight, I'm just clarifying for those who are careless about their use of words.
- Mikeb85 4y agoYes but there's also people who think capitalism = things they don't like and don't bother to think about what the alternative truly looks like.
- jlkuester7 4y ago> Bonfire apps are open source and modular, meaning they’re made of building blocks you can use to create your own custom apps or extensions. I might be wrong, but this feels kind of like a fusion of Mastodon + Nextcloud. Meaning that you have a social/federation-first framework that allows you easily build apps on top of the framework that extend the ecosystem (similar to the way that Nextcloud apps can be easily written and deployed on a Nextcloud server and can integrate with various server features and interoperate with other apps). It seems like this could be really cool! It could help fix one of the current challenges I see in the fediverse which involves a splintering of accounts that you post from. For example, I often see organizations with accounts for both Mastodon and PeerTube. It seems like Bonfire would possibly allow for for a single account that can be used both on a "social" app and on a "video" app....
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agoyou can most definitely use your mastodon account to log in to a peertube instance and post from there, no one is stopping you from doing that NOW...... if you have a mastodon/pleroma go and try it on a peertube instance. don't know why people create multiple accounts, peeertube has had sign in from fediverse for a long time now
- rglullis 4y ago> don't know why people create multiple accounts The biggest marketing failure in the fediverse is that people still think that an instance determines your reach. They think of instances as subreddits, not as email servers.
- Ruthalas 4y agoDo you have a thorough description of how it all works you can link? (Mastodon, or the fediverse in general.) I'd like to understand it, but haven't really felt like I grasped it after reading short descriptions.
- 4y ago
- KoftaBob 4y agoFor those looking to go even further than federated, to fully P2P social networks, the scuttlebutt protocol is the way to go. The two best clients for it that are still actively developed are Planetery and Manyverse. https://www.scuttlebutt.nz https://www.scuttlebutt.nz https://www.planetary.social https://www.planetary.social https://www.manyver.se https://www.manyver.se
- kevincox 4y agoI want to love scuttlebutt but multi-device is critical to me.
- KoftaBob 4y agoYeah that’s a big pain point that i’m hoping to see figured out soon. It can’t reach mass appeal until that’s handled seamlessly.
- gs17 4y agoDid they fix discovery? I love the concept, but my issue was that I had to connect to people to find people, and the only network I could reach easily was largely people I really didn't want to talk to. I think "Rooms" were supposed to fix it, but they didn't exist yet when I tried it.
- Mikeb85 4y ago> Working together to build safer, more open and fun federated tools and communities for the post-capitalist world WTF is this sentence? And post-capitalist?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sangnoir 4y ago> And post-capitalist? Would you prefer "Post-ad-driven-, post-for-profit-, post-data-mining social media world" be preferable? I think we can agree that profit-maximalism has thoroughly fucked-up social media. Bonfire aims to buck that trend.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hunterb123 4y ago"post-capitalist" pass, comrade. bit of irony it's posted to a VC ran forum, bet they'd take funding too.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Kinrany 4y ago> take back control Seeing this phrase used over and over after Brexit is so funny.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gjsman-1000 4y ago"and communities for the post-capitalist world" Rule #37 of Doing Business: Don't use language that is vague and open to wildly different interpretations in your public advertising as to why people should use your product. Save that for the Terms of Service.
- wmf 4y agoI'm not sure that post-capitalists are Doing Business in the first place. I'd say if you want to build a leftist community then you're better off setting that expectation upfront. If problematic people never join then you don't have to cancel them later.
- ppjim 4y agoIt looks like Google+ v2.0. I hope they learn from mistakes.
- seti0Cha 4y agoWhat would those be? I thought the primary mistake Google made was in building Google+ after everyone was already on Facebook (and trying to force people into it)
- seanhunter 4y agoThere were multiple mistakes other than that, but for example initially you needed an invite to Google+ and they artificially limited the number of invites. This worked great for them with gmail, creating an inflation of demand and a fomo effect but with Google+ it just meant if you were on Google+ noone you knew (who didn't actually work for Google) was on there and if you weren't on Google+ you couldn't get on unless you knew someone who worked for Google or was one step removed. They built a business model that relies on network effects and then deliberately killed the network effect during the adoption phase.
- seti0Cha 4y agoGood point. I totally forgot about that dynamic. I now recall that by the time I got an invite I was already kind of sour on them. Not that I was actually excited to join, I just didn't like them inducing in me a feeling of being not one of the cool kids.
- seanhunter 4y agoYeah. Exactly the same for me. It was a serious misstep because by all accounts some of the functionality (circles in particular) would have been a significant step forward for social media in general. By the time they realised their mistake and started pushing it (heavily) the ship had sailed.
- Fellshard 4y ago'safe' and 'open' are doing some heavy lifting, here. What would the definitions of those words be, in this context?
- etchalon 4y agoI suspect these types of federated tools will absolutely surge in popularity if Musk completes his purchase of Twitter.
- pkphilip 4y agoWhy? The problem with Twitter is that they currently suspend accounts, remove posts because of "misinformation" and at the instigation of countries wishing to silence critics (see India). And yes, they also have a huge bot problem. If Elon Musk takes over and removes this Twitter censorship and deals with the bot issue, more people will stay on with Twitter rather than opt for alternate platforms.
- etchalon 4y agoThe problem with Twitter, for a certain and specific segment of its users, is that it bans too many users and removes too many posts. The other problem with Twitter, for a different but specific segment of its users, is that it doesn't ban enough users and remove enough posts. If Musk changes Twitters content moderation policy, Users from column A will be happier, and users from column B will be less happy. I believe there are a lot more people in Column B than A.
- gaurang_tandon 4y agoCoincidentally Discord was almost named Bonfire until they changed it (https://gist.github.com/advaith1/540543d6a2b7fd66abdb0eb02c002f88 https://gist.github.com/advaith1/540543d6a2b7fd66abdb0eb02c0...). The two are quite distinct though: most obvious being able to host your own instance and the code being open source. No other connection that I can see, though.
- mayel 4y agoOne other connection is using Elixir in our stack, but it's a coincidence.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- holonsphere 4y agoI'd be curious to see what could be build on top of the value flows flavor of this.